-Broadcast-
Garp was unconscious.
Black Sperm's composite giant held the old man for a moment after the last of the fighting went out of him, then made a decision about him — the same kind of decision people make about things that have stopped being interesting — and threw him against the wall.
Not carefully. Not cruelly, particularly. Just discarded, the way you set something down when it no longer requires attention.
"Even at your peak," the pale face said, to the crumpled figure at the base of the wall, "you couldn't have beaten me. Enjoy the prison. You'll be buried in it."
The Black Sperm colony reorganized from giant form back into collective movement — hundreds of small black figures streaming forward in loose formation, humming something tuneless, heading deeper into Still Water Prison. The goal was the bottom levels, where the most dangerous prisoners were held. Releasing them would be the final blow to the Marine's reputation: their showcase prison, cracked open by a pirate cadre that looked like a child's nightmare, emptying itself on live broadcast for the world to see.
They moved without obstruction. The prison staff had either retreated to defensible positions or been dealt with before Garp arrived. Whatever corridors needed crossing, they crossed.
They arrived at the third level.
And stopped.
The Soul Lock Warden, Thresh, was not at his post.
The green-flamed skeleton that served as this section's prison beast and authority figure — the being whose biometric clearance was the only legitimate means of opening the third-level gate — was simply not present. Not hiding, not deployed elsewhere in the prison on some errand. Not verifiably anywhere within Still Water Prison at all. The staff had been trying to locate him since the emergency protocol activated. No one had succeeded.
The critical moment, and the warden of the most sensitive section had apparently been absent before it started.
The third-level gate stood in his place. It was a substantial piece of engineering — seastone, high-density, a single continuous panel without seam or joint, the kind of construction that represented a significant portion of a nation's annual seastone output. It did not move when the Black Sperms pushed on it. It did not crack when they hit it. When a portion of the colony climbed its surface to look for weaknesses, they found none, and also discovered that extended contact made them feel drained and small in the way that sea water and seastone always made Devil Fruit users feel.
"They spent this much on a door," one of them said, in genuine offense.
The colony scratched their collective heads. The seastone was the problem it always was and would always be for anyone whose abilities came from a Devil Fruit — it didn't matter how strong the fruit was, how many times you could multiply or divide or recombine. Seastone doesn't negotiate. It is simply the parent that these abilities were never equipped to argue with.
"Kaido controls the supply," another observed. "Wano Country. He sells to everyone, including the Marine. Apparently at significant volume."
"He sells to the people who put pirates in prison."
"He takes the money. He doesn't care what it's used for."
This was, in fact, accurate. Kaido's relationship with seastone commerce had a straightforward philosophy: anyone who doesn't make money is a fool, and the Marine's orders were as good as anyone else's. Better, actually — they paid reliably and in quantity. The two had eventually formalized the arrangement through the World Government to eliminate the black market intermediaries who had been extracting a margin on both sides. Direct trade, money and product settled on delivery. Everyone involved in the transaction was happy. The people being restrained by the product were not consulted.
The Black Sperm collective stared at the door.
"Can we combine everything and punch through it?"
The honest answer was: maybe. Possibly. The total mass of the colony concentrated into a single impact — it was theoretically significant. But theory confronting seastone had a poor historical record, and they had never attempted it. If it failed, they had exhausted their best physical option, and the mission failed with it.
One of the Black Sperms — a unit that had not fought since the prison entry, held back ally because its cellular structure made it the best available container — reached into its own chest.
"Use what Orochimaru gave us."
The comment produced immediate reaction from the others. Several of them simultaneously expressed that deploying a strategic asset on a door was wasteful, that it should be used on an actual enemy, that they would have to report the expenditure and request replacements —
"We complete the mission or we don't. Which one?"
Discussion. Argument. Resolution.
The container unit withdrew a glowing sphere from inside its own body — white, smooth, emanating light without heat, about the size of a large fist. A scientific ninja tool, crafted by Orochimaru, issued to each Joker Pirates cadre before departure as a last-resort instrument. Not many had been produced. Each officer received one. These were not battlefield weapons — they were emergency keys, designed to be used when nothing else would work.
They were using theirs on a door.
"Everyone back."
The colony didn't argue about that part. They retreated to a significant distance, leaving a single unit holding the sphere. When the corridor was clear, the remaining Black Sperm raised its arm and threw the tool toward the gate in a smooth arc.
It traveled quietly. No drama in its flight — a simple parabola, white light steady and calm, nothing threatening about it until it reached the point of contact.
The shell fractured on impact.
What followed was not an explosion in the conventional sense. There was no fire, no shockwave that broke bones or shattered walls. There was instead a concentrated cutting force that unfolded from the point of contact outward — precise, geometrically , targeting the structural integrity of the gate rather than everything around it. The seastone surface held for approximately a second, which was longer than most materials would have managed.
Then the cracks started.
They spread fast and deep, splitting the gate along multiple axes simultaneously, running from the impact point in every direction, branching and networking until the gate looked less like a door and more like a diagram of fracture mechanics. Then the weight of its own destruction pulled it apart. Chunks fell. The dust rose. The opening that remained was complete.
"It worked." The colony filtered back to assess the damage. "Boss Buggy's sealed power is something else. Even high-density seastone."
The scientific ninja tool had contained a fraction of Buggy's full strength — compressed, stored, deployable on contact. Even that fragment had been sufficient for this. The logic followed, and some of the Black Sperms followed it out to its conclusion, wondering if such a tool deployed against an Admiral would achieve comparable results. Probably not — an Admiral was not a door — but the wondering was natural.
The important thing was that the gate no longer existed.
Through the gap, the third-level prisoners stared out.
They had felt the emergency protocol. They had heard the battle between Magellan and the dragon-man reverberating through the structure for the past hour. They had registered every tremor and impact and drawn the obvious conclusions. When the gate finally came down, there had been, briefly, a shared anticipation — the image each of them had composed of the kind of person capable of destroying a seastone gate, the scale of the presence that must be standing on the other side.
What they saw instead was a collection of small black figures, none of them above knee height, with white faces and trembling antennae, peering back at them with an expression of mutual assessment.
The female pirates in the group, several of whom had been constructing mental images along very different lines, processed this for a moment.
"Is that...?"
It was.